


Divisible

by rabbitprint



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Self Confidence Issues, Superstition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27307645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: Spoilers through 5.3 MSQ, set pre-game, an Igeyorhm short.Thirteen is a number of great fortune. In aetherology, it is a number of stability: six elements polarized Astral, six Umbral, with an unaspected party in the middle. With Azem so often absent, Amaurot holds only thirteen of the Convocation as well -- which means six votes per side at most, with the last to break any ties. It is a prime number. It is the seventh curve in a spiral sequence.Igeyorhm volunteers eagerly for its shard.
Relationships: Igeyorhm & Lahabrea (Final Fantasy XIV), Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch & Lahabrea
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Divisible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ch1ps0h0y](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ch1ps0h0y/gifts).



> _Prompt from ch1ps0h0y: "Igeyorhm and her dealing with the failure of the Thirteenth shard, whether that be in the past or in the present. Bonus if Lahabrea makes an appearance!"_

Thirteen is a number of great fortune. In aetherology, it is a number of stability: six elements polarized Astral, six Umbral, with an unaspected party in the middle. With Azem so often absent, Amaurot holds only thirteen of the Convocation as well -- which means six votes per side at most, with the last to break any ties. It is a prime number. It is the seventh curve in a spiral sequence.  
  
It is balanced in its own lack of divisibility.   
  
Whenever the Convocation must renew one of its members, the count of them goes down to thirteen as well -- but no lower. They always replenish their ranks. Always. Thirteen is their baseline, their recovery mark. It is the representation of all of them together: diminished, but regrouping.   
  
Igeyorhm is not a student of the abstract mathematics which Loghrif is so fond of, nor of the geometries which mark all of Emmerololth's designs. Her love of the number is a simpler joy, like relishing the air after a rainstorm: the tickle of cool breezes stirring the curtains, petrichor filtering up to the windows of her home. It is the center around which Igeyorhm's world revolves around, a private talisman which promises her that the world is balanced safely upon its rim.   
  
After the Sundering, the rule of Thirteen no longer holds. The Convocation is scattered, shattered to a fraction of its strength; there are only three Unsundered, while the rest of them have been multiplied by a factor of fourteen. Increased and decreased, a surfeit of reduction. Nothing adds up.  
  
But thirteen is still lucky, for that is the shard which is furthest from the Source and Hydaelyn's tepid aether. It is suffused already in Darkness, furthest from the Light. Everything about its existence is proof of their ability to recover -- to keep hope burning strong, despite everything that has been done to them.  
  
Igeyorhm volunteers eagerly for its shard.  
  
Even though she lacks the inquisitiveness of Mitron or the patience of Altima, Igeyorhm's particular strength has always lain within her capacity for faith. It is one of the most vital components of being able to shape creation from nothingness. In order to manifest a tangible result from your own willpower and imagination, you must first overcome the doubts which hiss, _why would anyone wish to see what you make, what could you possibly create that is useful, what_ ** _value_** _do you bring to the world_ \-- and force that confidence into a shape for others to finally perceive.   
  
The teachers in Amaurot are very clear about the uses of natural biology, and what can be accomplished by specifically-tailored phantoms. Merely hoping for a tool that can perform a function is not enough. It is destructive beyond measure to create without understanding consequences, like bluntly applying predators to stamp out infestations -- only to have those same beastkin overhunt an ecosystem to extinction. You cannot find the solution without first understanding the problem's nature, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of your particular solution. To craft a beast without knowing its motions is to create a shell at best, hollow and unable to act.  
  
But if you believe your effort is doomed from the start -- if it has a hidden flaw, some secret weakness -- then it _will_ be. Your own hands will determine it. Your own mind will undercut you.  
  
Faith is a vital component of every Ascian's existence. Faith in the aether of the star, in your people's love around you. In the world's willingness to grant you the aid you seek, to cherish you as much as you cherish it back.  
  
Faith in yourself.  
  
When the Thirteenth is destroyed, Igeyorhm feels herself being eradicated along with it. Its aether drains into the bellies of starving voidkin. The currents of the Underworld run dry. Like water running backwards into the ocean, Igeyorhm cannot stem it with her hands; the tide seeps through her fingers, soaking through the sand and vanishing forever. She cannot save its life. She can only watch as it dwindles into nothingness, like a great eye closing forever, and play witness to how it ends.   
  
She mourns on every level imaginable. Her own soul is gone. Her people's souls, dried to dust. Another piece of Zodiark -- a stepping stone back to their salvation -- is now suspended lifelessly in the rift for all eternity, useless to the Source and forever rejected by it.  
  
And -- while she cannot somehow think to mourn herself any higher than the millions upon millions of lost souls -- Igeyorhm's grief continues to wind inwards, no matter how she strives to push it aside. Luck has failed them. The world has abandoned its love for the Ascians. And with it all goes the child that Igeyorhm had been, who had trusted in the fundamental harmony of a benevolent universe with every fiber of her identity.  
  
It is the death of faith that she watches gutter out in the last embers on the Thirteenth, like the shocking emptiness left behind after someone takes a last step off a cliff. It is the death of someone who believed.

* * *

Every time Igeyorhm allows herself to sleep, she dreams of everything she did wrong.  
  
When she forces herself to wake, her breath is sour in her mouth. It is impossible to pinpoint exactly where she had initially gone astray -- whether it was during the last confrontation with Thirteenth's defenders, or the very first -- and so _everything_ she has ever done in her long life is suspect. Every hope, every goal, every drop of confidence marks her as a failure in advance.  
  
There is nothing of value in her. There never was to begin with.

* * *

Like an allergic overreaction, Igeyorhm's body cannot stomach even the slightest hint of the number after its shard has burned away. Her aversion becomes compulsive; she splits lines of chairs into totals of seven and six, kicks aside stones and tears the heads off flowers as she passes by. She counts and adjusts rows of cups whenever she drifts through people's abodes, scornful of whatever rumors of mysterious hauntings she may be leaving behind. At one point -- visiting the kitchens of a nobleman whose dishware is filigreed with gold, a smirking excess as he eats from tables which trumpet his own wealth -- she finds herself grasping a plate in both hands and shattering it upon the floor.  
  
She counts the broken chunks of pottery like a scryer would read the bones, and finds herself exhaling slowly when the tally is twenty-four.  
  
A thousand bad habits sculpt themselves out of her own fears. One thousand, _thirteen_ thousand; it makes no difference in her folly. If reversing her own superstition might act as a ward to protect her, she would accept eradicating the number from all of reality to keep herself safe.  
  
There had been no reason for her to expect such betrayal. The loss of the Thirteenth had been, at worst, a flaw of overconfidence. The blame is shared by all the Convocation, as Emet-Selch has wearily reminded her. None of them had known precisely how a Rejoining would work. It had been an experiment. They had all believed wrongly.  
  
But Igeyorhm knows: the fault does _not_ belong to them as a whole. She had seen the danger signs. _She_ had been the one to decide that more darkness was needed, not less. In her confidence, in her _faith_ , she had ignored all caution and had pressed on anyway, convincing herself that she did not need to stop and wait, that she did not have to fear. The world favored them. The Thirteenth shard was proof.  
  
The blame is hers, obliquely. She blames herself overtly. The Convocation moves on. And, as the centuries roll past -- the frustration of it all wrapping around them more tightly with each borrowed body they steal, like a poison unleashed upon them by their living hosts as revenge -- she watches them grow steadily more willing to forget only a portion of the equation of fault, and cling to the half that condemns her.  
  
Less and less often, she hears, _the fault belongs to us all_. Now, _everyone_ is too tired to defend her, even in their own hearts. Whenever the topic arises of how many more shards remain to restore Zodiark, each Convocation member simply glances in Igeyorhm's direction, as if she had _chosen_ to sabotage their efforts deliberately, starting them off at a disadvantage rather than admit to ignorance.  
  
Her courage -- which she had once been so proud of -- becomes a shuddering, boneless thing.  
  
The change in it infects her work. Igeyorhm never held an open fervor for phantom creation, but even the simpler designs become corrupted in her hands. She crafts butterflies whose wings shatter like ice the moment the breeze touches them. She draws fish out of snow that writhe before swelling and exploding into red slush.  
  
Angry with her own incompetence, she casts about for a memory of one of Mitron's creations -- an amphibious wavekin -- and weaves its concept doggedly into shape. Its bones form correctly. The flesh is simple enough. Yet, just as Igeyorhm dusts a layer of scales across the creature's body, her mind treacherously slides to envisioning Emet-Selch's reaction to all the rest of her attempts. In her thoughts, she can imagine his whisper, whip-quick: _of_ ** _course_** _she failed, what_ ** _else_** _did you expect from her, from someone so impetuous._   
  
Cradled in Igeyorhm's palms, the creature's flesh ripples. Its spine unzips along its length, ribs reversing into fangs as a newborn mouth opens wide and whispers the same condemnations in Emet-Selch's voice.  
  
She screams, horrified, and flings the monstrosity to the ground, where it strikes with a wet, splattering noise. Undeterred, it rolls with its mouth facing towards her, still chanting: _of course of course she failed of_ ** _course_**.   
  
She disintegrates its aether with a burst of thought. After its essence scatters into the smallest rainbowed motes, she clasps her arms around her body as she shudders, fighting to smother both fear and truth with the same gesture.

* * *

When Emet-Selch approaches her a few moons later, part of Igeyorhm is terrified that he has somehow found out about her malformed making: that it had opened up a path directly across the rift, and had channeled his mind directly to berate her.  
  
Yet the man merely looks weary, exhausted by life, as if he is in the midst of making an argument to reality as to why it should unmake him on the spot. He comes to a halt before her with his lips already frowning, a mirror to the lines of his mask.   
  
"You are to be paired with Lahabrea," he announces flatly. "Congratulations."   
  
"With _Lahabrea?_ " she barks, all her disbelief on display. Even with their forces stunted, their Seeker remains one of their strongest. He is Unsundered, he is masterful. He is a creator and creative, a visionary who will almost certainly devise the solution they need with the same inspirational drive that has caused him to leap over any number of otherwise impossible conundrums in the past. There is no means by which Igeyorhm can contribute. Not in her current condition. "What am I to do, _make_ things for him?"  
  
But Emet-Selch only scowls all the deeper. "Yes," he insists, the order brittle. " _Make them._ "  
  
She thinks, at first, that it is some horrible jest. Some new cruelty, as they are all discovering the applications of hatred: that Igeyorhm is so pathetic and useless that she is to be assigned the person who needs her the _least_. That, when Lahabrea comes to collect her, he will demand for her to demonstrate the skills she no longer possesses, and then cast her aside with the proof of her unsuitability.  
  
But -- like Emet-Selch -- their Seeker merely looks hollowed out from within, accepting the burden of her presence with a sullen nod, and a wave of his hand to indicate that she should follow. He does not call firebirds to attend his every whim, or spend his days in giddy speculation, devastating reams of parchment with sketches of living statues with faceted jewels for eyes, or amphibians with dragonfly wings. Nor does he demand for Igeyorhm to show him any of her own designs. Sun after sun goes past while Lahabrea conjures only the basics of elements to his hands, no less destructive for all their raw fury -- and she realizes, slowly, that he is as empty as she is. As if there is something so deeply torn out of him that the remains of his soul have been broken without it, a keystone excised from his heart, and the rubble left behind has come to the decision to slowly crumble rather than try to stand on its own. One more brick sliding free each year, powerless to even find a clean end for itself without the intervention of an earthquake to swallow it whole.  
  
So she does. She creates for him. In her rough, cringing way, rife with failures: she makes the designs that he cannot. And when she, too, fails at this so often that she resorts to simple elements as well -- ice storms, sheets of sleet, stalactites snapped free of the heavens to plummet down upon their foes -- Lahabrea never comments.   
  
He merely nods, incinerates the leftovers still standing, and then they move onto the next task together.  
  
She has just finished shredding apart a fine tapestry on the Source -- a woven map of thirteen desert nations, very pretty and _very_ nerve-wracking -- when Lahabrea kicks up his feet upon the table, staring bleakly at the ceiling.   
  
"When we revive Lord Zodiark," he begins -- _when_ , not _if_ , as some of the Sundered have started to refer to it, "what shall we do about Venat's restoration?"  
  
Taken aback, Igeyorhm blinks. It is a highly practical question, so much so that she wonders why no one else in the Convocation has voiced it before. " _Venat_ is the cause of all our suffering, Lahabrea. Why would you _want_ to? Is it even possible that they might be recoverable from Hydaelyn?"   
  
Lahabrea shakes his head, dubious in every way save that his eyebrows are arched in curiosity, meaning that he truly wishes to find out. "If Elidibus could return to us, there is no reason that Venat could not be separated the same way. And if our wish is to restore _every_ Ascian soul and raise our people back up to power," he continues, pushing against the desk with his boots so that his chair tips up, "then how should we begin to pick and choose? Do we stop with everyone who aided in Hydaelyn's summoning? What of those who aided them? And of those who did naught, save agree with them in their hearts?" He rocks the chair back and forth, and then sighs, his energy dimming. "Regardless, we will have to make peace with Azem, at least. In _some_ shape or form."  
  
This is even less palatable to consider. Venat's actions were clear, but Azem's less so. Their errant fourteenth member might not have contributed to the enervation of their star -- but abandoning the Convocation beforehand in the crisis's first wave had been nearly as bad. Still, Igeyorhm can understand the reasoning. There had been hard words exchanged in the midst of a disaster, and no time to make peace. Had Azem's dissent come at any other moment, they would have resolved matters properly: with extended debate and discussion, both sides working hard towards a mutual understanding until they shared an agreement once again. "Must we?"  
  
"The seat cannot stand empty forever -- though it has done well thus far," Lahabrea adds with a bitter, dry laugh. "Else we may be the Convocation of Thirteen from now on, and dwell in the legacy of our failure even after the restoration of our star."  
  
Igeyorhm grimaces out of habit now, though the thought itself is equally disquieting. _You would bring a fresh Doom by naming us so_ , she wants to say -- except her protest is worth nothing, being only a parasitical worm that gnaws through her thoughts and seeks to burrow into others. "'Twould take even more of a miracle to sway them. That, or we feed them to Lord Zodiark against their wills, I suppose. What other choice is there? The person I was in the past would not be able to do such a thing. But the person I _am,_ " she acknowledges, each word as heavy as a spadeful of dirt upon her own coffin, "is capable of so much less, even though I could perform such an act without a second thought now."  
  
She does not look at Lahabrea when she admits the last, not wanting to witness the lack of surprise which she can guess must be on his face. She has already demonstrated her ineptitude too many times over by now. She is no longer suitable to be a member of the Convocation. She is no longer suitable to be an _Ascian_ at all.  
  
But after a moment of silence, the scrape of his chair against the floor drags her attention back anyway. Lahabrea has dropped his feet back to the ground; he is looking up towards her, and enough of his bitterness has eased that a flicker of a different emotion has made it through, as fragile as a seedling against a winter frost.  
  
For the first time since her assignment to him, Igeyorhm sees the corner of his mouth make a small, wry smile. "Then that makes two of us."  
  
The acceptance of it is strange. It settles painlessly in Igeyorhm's chest, warming some of the ache that has dwelt there for longer than she can count. She takes a breath, and finds that she is breathing easier: a simple in and out of her lungs, with no greater expectations than that for success.  
  
She sets aside the shredded remains of the tapestry without allowing herself to count what is left. "Agreed."  
  
Two is not a fortunate number. It is too easily split apart and reduced. Its numbers quarrel with itself. It is not much luck, particularly not against the odds they are given -- but, Igeyorhm decides, it may be a place to start.   
  



End file.
